CHAPTER
17
Moonglow lit their way as they raced around the side of the storage building. Reaching the far side, they paused. Across one of the farm’s smaller fields, a glistening horizon seemed to beckon. Panting hard, struggling to control his breathing, a cautious Subar leaned out around the pebbly side of the structure in an attempt to search as much of the field as possible. Occasional shouts, curses, and the sporadic burst of weapons fire from other parts of the property continued to pierce the nocturnal silence.
Ashile crowded close behind him. “I don’t see anything.”
“Doesn’t mean there’s nothing there,” he told her.
She started to push past him. “The longer we wait here, the more likely there will be.”
Reaching out, he grabbed her left arm and held her back. “Don’t rush it. Haven’t you ever watched migrin?” he asked, referring to the small native black-bristled arthropod that was the Visarian equivalent of omnipresent urban vermin. “They don’t just scurry out across open spaces they want to cross. They dart from one corner to another, pause, look around, then run, pause, look around, and repeat, until they reach their destination.”
The moonglow turned her perspiration to pearls as she looked back the way they had come. “Tkay, we’ve paused. Now it’s time to dart.” Pulling free from his grasp, she turned away and sprinted for the cover of the half-grown field.
He started to follow. A reflection caught his eye. It should not have been where it was, because there was nothing for the moonlight to reflect from. It took him only a second for knowledge to reconcile with memory.
Slantsuit.
“Ashile, no!”
Too late. In a flurry of glints and glimmers, the two slantsuit-wearing operatives rose from the polymer-shrouded field and closed on the oncoming young woman. Catching sight of them at last, she slid to a halt, whirled, and tried to race back the way she had come. Weapons appeared from beneath the concealment of the military-grade camo gear. Slantsuits bent light around them, virtually rendering the wearers invisible unless they moved. Now they were in pursuit of a desperate, frightened Ashile. They could easily have shot her down, but were unmistakably making an attempt to take her alive.
Anguish is a lens that often brings otherwise obscured realities into sharp focus. Seeing Ashile running toward him, her hard-nosed pursuers gaining ground with each relentless stride, he remembered in a sudden rush who his true friend was. Who had always been there to listen to him prattle on, often vaingloriously. Who had taken him in and given him shelter when the screeching and infighting of his insufferable family had grown intolerable. Who had shared food with him and, when he was broke, loaned him cred for whose return he had never been pressed. Who had stared at him in a certain distinctive, inimitable way when she thought he didn’t notice. Who had laughed with him and walked with him and sometimes cried with him. The person whose attention he had so often shrugged off, frequently with a disdainful laugh. Not Zezula, she of the flawless face and unobtainable body and overarching ego.
Ashile. Always Ashile. And now that he had finally managed to substitute understanding for folly, perception for obliviousness, it was too late.
Or not. Activating the meat cutter and raising it high, he waved it in front of him in as active and threatening a manner as he could muster and charged out from behind the side of building, screaming at the top of his lungs the most bloodthirsty curses in his developing streetwise repertoire.
She might have stopped, or at least slowed, but she was running full-out. He shot past before it registered on her what he was doing. Though in stature he was far from threatening, in the reduced light the nature of his “weapon” was sufficiently ill-defined to bring both of the oncoming attackers to an abrupt halt. Raising their weapons, they fired almost simultaneously.
Instead of just a foot or finger, every muscle in Subar’s body seemed to go to sleep at once. The beam cutter fell from his spasming fingers, bounced across the ground, and automatically shut down. Sprawling forward, he gritted his teeth against the paralyzing tingling that had assumed control of his nervous system. Whatever the nature of the weapon that had brought him down, it had been set to stun, not kill. Whether that would prove the more benign alternative remained to be seen.
Approaching guardedly, his slantsuit-clad assailants eyed him with caution. One nudged the youthful form none too gently, then looked toward the shadowed structural complex.
“The girl’s gone.”
“We’ll get her soon enough.” His half-visible partner scanned the conjoined buildings through special night-vision lenses. “We’ll get them all. Give me a hand with this one.”
Shouldering his rifle, he bent over the uncontrollably quivering body. It was not heavy, and he was able to carry it easily by himself while his companion, rifle at the ready and held parallel to the ground, defended their retreat.
Flinx had sensed the shock and confusion in Subar’s mind the instant the younger man was struck by the pulse from the infiltrator’s weapon. With Pip flying cover, he hurried around one small structure, ducked beneath a brace of strapped-together conduits, and rounded another building. As he did so, he nearly ran over Ashile. A quick change of emotional focus laid bare the panic and distress that were raging within her.
So out of breath was she that she could barely stand, stumbling against him as he reached down to grab her shoulders and keep her upright. “Subar—they’ve—they got Subar!” She was gasping and crying at the same time. “I was running and—I didn’t see the men, and Subar, he—he came running past me, running right toward them, and…” She gulped air. “You’ve got to—you have to…” She started to choke on her own desperate sobs. “Please…!”
“Easy, easy.” Still holding on to her, Flinx peered into the night, his eyes half closed, reaching out until he found what he was searching for. “He’s still alive. His feelings are—that’s odd.” He frowned.
Slowly regaining her wind, she stared up at him. “What? What!”
He blinked, turned his gaze back to hers. “As near as I can tell, emotionally he seems at ease.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Flinx was not old—and as he would have been the first to admit, he was far from wise. But he was older, and a little wiser, than the young woman struggling to collect herself in front of him.
“Maybe it does.”
Still breathing hard, but easier now, she was able to step back and stand by herself. “I don’t underst—” She broke off, looking at him, then turned to stare out into the moon-illuminated night. “Oh,” she mumbled softly.
Flinx moved to stand next to her and join her in peering out into the darkness. He had detoured to Visaria out of a sense of despondency, a feeling that he might be embarked on the sacrifice of his life for something not worth saving. In his brief time exploring a small bit of the planet he had seen little to change that opinion. The scales remained weighted heavily against sentience that all too often seemed selfish, self-centered, and indifferent to the fate of others. If individual humans and the representatives of the other intelligent species were first and foremost inclined to pursue their own personal interests at the expense of everyone else’s, why should he forfeit his future on their behalf?
Street-bred Subar, the least likely of avatars, had shown him why. Out of love and on behalf of another, the otherwise wholly self-centered youth had performed that most remarkable of deeds: an utterly unselfish act. Contemplating an action that was as righteous as it was unexpected, Flinx knew that had Clarity Held been in Ashile’s place, he would have done exactly the same thing.
Recognizing this did not make him feel any better about himself, but it did make him feel a lot better about the species to which he belonged. Maybe even hopeful enough to think it worth saving.
He did not have to search for the captured youth, either visually or empathetically. Once he had escorted Ashile back inside the complex, Piegal Shaeb saved him the trouble. Boosted by a thumb-sized amplifier, the Underhouse master’s voice reverberated throughout the buildings. Flinx was able to understand the carefully enunciated ultimatum without straining. So was a shaky Ashile, and Tracken Behdulvlad from his position near the front door, and the rest of the frightened but resolute youths who continued to take shelter within the facility.
“Listen to me, Philip Lynx!”
Amazement at hearing his real name was such a shock to Flinx that Tracken, who was standing next to him at the time, wondered if the younger man was about to pass out. The emotional jolt her master suffered caused Pip to flutter her wings in alarm.
Shaeb gave him no time to wonder how the Underhouse master had learned his identity. “I don’t know what you are doing on Visaria, where you come from, or what your interest is in this miserable pod of street scrawn who have robbed and insulted me, but if you will pause a moment to take an objective look at your present situation, I think you will find your commitment misplaced. Despite your unjustified, unwarranted, and I must say inexplicable intervention on their behalf, I hold no animus against you. I am prepared to guarantee you safe passage away from this agricultural facility. All you have to do is step out and walk away. No one will shoot at you.” A pause, following which the Underhouse master’s words were embellished by a note of sardonic humor. “Do not mistake that I make this offer purely out of altruism. It is as much for the protection of my people as for yourself.”
Ashile was eyeing him apprehensively. To varying degrees, so were Zezula, Sallow Behdul, and Missi. Tracken Behdulvlad simply clutched his rifle and waited expectantly.
Flinx walked to a window. Like all its counterparts within the facility, it had been darkened by Tracken. A touch of an embedded control rendered the material porous. Designed to allow the entry of fresh air while keeping out pests, it now permitted his voice to carry.
“I have no quarrel with you, either, Piegal Shaeb! Let the pod come with me and I promise I’ll work to settle both your insult and your financial loss!”
There was no mistaking the incredulity in Shaeb’s reply. “From what I have seen and heard, you do not strike me as someone with access to the resources necessary to impart the necessary degree of compensation I seek.”
Darkened or not, Flinx kept clear of the window as he responded. “You would be surprised.”
“I have already been surprised by you, Philip Lynx. Or Flinx, whichever you prefer. That is why I am reluctant to trust anything you say. I am weighed down by the need to suffer no further surprises. Therefore, I make this proposal. All of you set aside whatever weapons you may possess and come out. I promise to discuss a variety of possible resolutions to this discomfiture, but only when I can sit face-to-face with those with whom I am in disagreement. In return, I promise not to vivisect millimeter by millimeter the polluted member of your precious pod whom my people are presently holding. If you doubt my resolve in this matter, I will be happy to send you a small portion of some significant portion of his anatomy, chosen at random.” Another pause, then, “You have five minutes to respond.”
Flinx turned back to the anxious faces waiting on him. Missi spoke up timidly. “Maybe we can talk our way out of this.” She stared hopefully at Flinx. “Did you really mean what you told him? That you could cover his financial losses from our boost?”
Expression glum, he nodded. “Yes, but it doesn’t matter. If we do as he asks, he’s going to kill all of us.”
Tracken frowned at his offworld visitor. “How do you know that?”
Flinx replied without hesitation. “I can perceive it. His speaking voice is unruffled and controlled, but his emotions are feral. There’s no safety to be found in complying with his demand.”
Zezula swallowed. She had been crying a lot and her face was badly swollen. “Then how do we respond?”
Flinx peered over at Tracken. “I’m afraid our praiseworthy host doesn’t have any more surprises in his agricultural bag of tricks. That shock has worn off.” Slowly he slipped his lustrous, stubby pistol back into its boot holster. “We have only two guns. Shaeb’s AAnn recruits have taken their leave and gone their own way, and some of his human subordinates have been put down, but I sense that he still has a dozen or so dedicated supporters with him.” His expression knotted. “Along with one other whose sentiments I can’t quite sort out.”
He nodded toward the agrigeneer. “Mr. Behdulvlad and I might be able to negotiate with them, and we might not. If we try and fail, Subar is become meat.” To her credit Ashile somehow maintained her composure, though he could sense that emotionally she was on the verge of a total breakdown.
He sighed heavily. Subar had given himself up to save Ashile—a gesture of profound nobility that would mean nothing if they threw themselves on Shaeb’s sham mercy. “I’m going to try something,” he told them, “but for it to have the best chance of success I have to go out there and confront him.” He looked at Tracken. “Stay here and do what you can. Don’t try to run. Shaeb’s no fool. Half a dozen of his people are spread out around the main residence, just waiting for someone to try to bolt. The rest are with Shaeb himself.” He turned away. “If I can deal with him in the manner I hope, I don’t think the others will see a vested interest in hanging around.” He started for a hallway that led to a side doorway.
Ashile took a step toward him, halted. “What are you going to do, Flinx?”
Sallow Behdul chose that moment to speak up. “I know what he’s going to do.” He was looking straight at Flinx, with a gaze that was not as simple as those who spent time in his company liked to think. “He’s going to make them fall down and cry, like he did to Chaloni and Dirran and me. Aren’t you?”
Flinx managed a slight smile. “Maybe not cry. But fiddle with feelings so that they don’t feel like shooting us, either.”
Ashile stared at him. “Subar told me about that. He said you could—could make people feel a certain way. Can you really do that to somebody like Piegal Shaeb?”
Shrugging, he turned away from her and started for the hall. “We’re about to find out.”
In response to his declared announcement that he was coming out, Shaeb responded favorably, but added a demand that the offworlder at all times keep his pet in view and on his person or she would be shot. Flinx complied, having to reach up once or twice to physically restrain the increasingly nervous Pip from taking flight.
“Relax.” Murmuring soothingly, he added something in the indigenous language of Alaspin as he reached up to stroke the back of her head. “Just relax. It’ll be all right. Everything is under control.” While he could manipulate his words, it was considerably harder to mask his true emotions. The resulting discrepancy between her master’s words and his feelings left her feeling edgy and ill at ease even while riding comfortably on his shoulder.
Appearing in the shadows, a tiny point of blue light rocked up and down, beckoning him to a spot around the side of the main storage building. Turning the corner, he found himself confronted by a clutch of armed men and women. Their presence was no surprise: he had sensed their location and number before he had exited the residence, just as he had detected the emotional resonance of those who had formed a perimeter around it to prevent any possible escape.
A figure that was innocuous in appearance yet commanding in attitude stepped forward into the moonlight. Piegal Shaeb looked Flinx up and down, reserving particular attention for the jittery flying creature curled around his left shoulder. Behind him, an older man pushed forward for a better look. Both his expression and his feelings were an agitated mix of awe, fear, and expectation. They simultaneously drew and puzzled Flinx, but he had no time to probe either them or the man who was projecting them.
The Underhouse master shook his head sadly. “All this trouble, so much intercession, on behalf of such unworthy scrims.”
“Unworthiness is a distinction founded on shifting perceptions.” Though Flinx sensed Subar’s presence, he could not see him. “Where’s the other one?”
“Such a waste of commitment.” Glancing back, Shaeb murmured a command.
A large, slantsuited figure ambled out of the shadows. In one hand he held the glistening, tapered shape of a neuronic pistol. The other clutched a still-stunned Subar by the collar, dragging the listless form forward. Indifferently, the operative released his grasp, letting the numbed captive crumple to the ground. Flinx studied the limp form for a moment, then returned his attention to Shaeb.
“You’re a very unpleasant person.”
The Underhouse Master pursed his lips. “I did not achieve my present prominence on account of a predilection to conviviality.”
Flinx’s expression stiffened. On his shoulder, Pip grew tense. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, he let his caressing fingers slip away from her scales. “You need, I think, to be nicer.” Deliberately, he reached forth with his Talent.
Nothing happened.
Staring at him, Shaeb’s head tilted to one side. “Interesting. I sense that you’re trying to do something. I know that is how you freed the other scrims from receiving the balance of the reprimand due them, though the nature of the method involved continues to elude me.” Turning, he spoke to the older man who continued to hover behind him. “You see? He is only a resourceful if peculiar young man. Not nearly so dangerous as you proposed.”
Flinx strained to engage his damnably erratic abilities and to project strongly onto the now confident individual standing before him. It was all to no apparent effect. His Talent had chosen that moment, as it sometimes did, to slip from his mental grasp. As if that were not enough, the worst headache he had experienced since touching down on Visaria threatened to split the back of his head.
The Underhouse master turned back to him. “Despite your apparent inability to affect this meeting, I have no intention of waiting until something does happen.”
While possessing only a fraction of her master’s potential, Pip’s perceptiveness had the advantage of being consistent. Sensing the lethal intent that was escalating in the speaker’s mind, she unfurled her wings preparatory to rising. A bolt from a carefully aimed and downtuned neuronic pistol caught her before she could rise from Flinx’s shoulder. Stunned, she fluttered to the ground. A traumatized Flinx immediately knelt beside her. His relief as he found that she was only paralyzed was overwhelming. Incensed beyond speaking, he turned to glare fiercely up at Shaeb.
The Underhouse master immediately put a hand to his forehead and took a step backward. Whatever the offworlder had sent forth and despite his earlier avowal, it had not made Shaeb feel “nicer.” Like a wave that had receded with the tide and was now flowing back inland, Flinx could feel his Talent returning. He readied himself to project forcefully.
Without waiting for orders, the same alert subordinate who had grounded Pip put a neuronic charge into the flying snake’s master.
Flinx felt himself crumpling. A second charge from another pistol struck him in the stomach before he hit the ground, further numbing him. Other underlings were on the verge of firing their own weapons, some of which were set to do considerably more than stun.
Shaken but still in control of himself, Shaeb threw up a hand. “Don’t kill him!” His voice returning to its more moderate, controlled level, he added, “Not yet.” Leaning forward, he frowned thoughtfully at the motionless young man now sprawled on the ground in front of him. His right hand was still rubbing at the front of his head.
“That was interesting, what you just did. I’d like to know how you did it.” Behind him, Theodakris was crowding cautiously close, striving for a better look at the paralyzed offworlder. Though unable to move, Flinx sensed that the older man was torn between desires: to approach even nearer or to turn and run away as fast as his legs would carry him.
“But interested as I am,” Shaeb was saying, “I don’t think I want to risk a repetition, or chance something even worse. My curiosity has its limits.”
I wish mine did, Flinx found himself thinking.
Stepping back, the Underhouse master addressed a man and a woman who were holding rifles that were designed to annihilate rather than stun. “You may kill him now.”
Unable to move a muscle, his entire body tingling from the dual neuronic charges his nervous system had absorbed, Flinx strove one last time to project. Though his Talent was returning, he could sense he was not quite there yet. Another ten or twenty seconds of recovery was all he needed. Or perhaps the unknown faculty that had saved him previously, most recently in the holding chamber in Malandere and prior to that on Arrawd, would bring about yet another inexplicable last-second miracle.
Something fiery tore into his right arm. The pain was excruciating, overpowering; worst of all, it overwhelmed any attempt on his part to concentrate. Dimly he heard a male voice mutter, “Damn—missed. Won’t this time, Mr. Shaeb, sir.”
Flinx tried to raise his head, and could not. Tried to focus his mind, and could not. Struggled desperately to rouse his Talent, and could…
A perfect circle of solid blackness appeared off to his right. Astoundingly, a figure stepped out of it. Then another, and another, and finally a third. Two of them appeared to be arguing even as they tumbled out, to the point that they were exchanging heavy, clawed, seven-digited blows with each other. While neither of the cantankerous combatants appeared to be suffering any damage from this contest, it was evident to any bystander that the slightest of their thunderous thumpings could easily take off a man’s head.
The muzzles of assorted weapons swung away from Flinx to aim in the direction of the three newcomers as Shaeb’s startled minions hastened to transfer their attention. As well as his suddenly unsettled emotional state, the expression on the face of the Underhouse master showed that for the first time since arriving at the agricultural complex, he was completely taken aback. As well he ought. Not only was their means of arrival utterly and completely alien, so were the three beings.
While two of them continued to wrestle and argue between themselves without doing any actual damage, the third hulking, black-and-white-splotched, brown-furred figure leaned over to peer down at the still-paralyzed Flinx out of amber-hued, black-pupiled eyes that were the size of dinner plates. A voice sounded inside his head. One with idiosyncratically clear, bell-like overtones.
“Hello, Flinx teacher,” resonated the simultaneously joyful, child-like, wise, and uniquely telepathic greeting.
Fighting the effects of the twin neuronic bursts, Flinx fought hard to make his lungs, his lips, and his larynx cooperate. His mouth moved. A feeble gasp emerged. He tried again. Words formed. Words he had not spoken in a long, long time.
“Hello, Fluff.”
Since he was eight years old, Piegal Shaeb had never lacked for an appropriate response to even the most difficult and unforeseen situation. Now all he could do was stand and gawk. Those of his minions who were not doing likewise kept glancing nervously at him for orders. None was forthcoming.
Keeping a watchful eye on the three enormous ursinoids, all of whom continued to ignore their surroundings, several of Shaeb’s subordinates tentatively approached the black disc. It hovered a couple of centimeters off the ground, absolutely motionless. One of the more enterprising armed underlings walked behind it, noting that it was no more than a few millimeters thick. Pulling his monitor, he aimed it in the direction of the disc’s back and played the sensor across the eldritch apparition from top to bottom. No information appeared on the readout. No measurement of sound, no indication of photonic activity, no ambient radiation: nothing. This was patently impossible. As impossible as the three outrageous creatures to which it had given birth.
Taking note of the presence of other humans, Fluff took delight in switching to the mode of communication that involved intricate oral modulation of ambient air pressure.
“Sensed Flinx in trouble, we did. Trouble even Flinx teacher could not play out of. So we dug a quick tunnel and came to help with current game. If Flinx dies, a part of the game comes to a stop.”
Being able to connect a voice to a body helped a stunned Shaeb out of his daze. “Tunnel? Game? What is this? What are these?” Whirling, he glowered at the openmouthed figure of Theodakris. “You never said anything about this offworlder having oversized, furry, contentious alien allies!”
“I don’t—that is, I didn’t…” Words simply failed the senior analyst. He could only stand, and stare.
“You should have,” Shaeb said quietly before he pulled the trigger on the pistol he was holding. Theodakris dropped to his knees. Looking down at himself, he marveled at the tiny, smoking hole that had appeared in his chest. He could not, of course, see the corresponding one that had appeared in his back. Not even when he fell over sideways.
With Fluff helping him, an unsteady Flinx was able to stand. Painfully and slowly, the effects of the neuronic bursts were wearing off. Nearby, Pip was struggling to get airborne. On the ground, Subar had recovered control over much of his nervous system, though not from the effects of the casual beating he had received. Wisely, he stayed where he was and made no attempt to rise.
“Your digging has gotten faster,” Flinx mumbled as his brain regained control of the mechanics involved in forming recognizable speech.
Fluff straightened proudly. “We’ve had a lot of practice since we saw you last.” Turning, he rumbled an admonition. “Moam, Bluebright! Stop fighting and come say hello to teacher.”
Immediately, the other two aliens ceased their rough-and-tumble discussion to crowd close around Flinx. He remembered each of them as if it were yesterday, and why not? When folk make one a present of a starship, not to mention a ship unlike any other in the known cosmos, one retains fond memories of the givers.
Something about the reunion steadied Piegal Shaeb’s nerves. Despite their size, there was nothing especially intimidating about the trio of unexpected arrivals. Perhaps he was reassured by a chronic cuddliness that seemed at variance with their still-unexplained method of arrival. Whatever the reason, in all his long and difficult life he had never gained anything by giving in to hesitation. Also, in his business he was nothing if not thorough.
“All right,” he barked decisively. “Kill them all!”
Rifles and pistols were steadied. As aim was taken, Bluebright and Moam jumped back into the coin-thick disc from which they had emerged. In the instant of astonishment that ensued, Shaeb’s subordinates neglected to open fire. One finally did so, but her shot went wild as she fell into a second disc. An exact duplicate of its predecessor, it had materialized beneath her feet. And those of the fighter standing next to her, and the one alongside him. It was wide enough to swallow every one of them, including a disbelieving Piegal Shaeb, who could not countenance that the natural laws of physics had been convinced to conspire against him.
A hesitant Flinx staggered over to the edge of the second disc. It lay on the ground like a circle of dull black plastic. Leaning over carefully, he peered down and in. Shrieks and screams and wails drifted up to him. They arose from figures that were growing smaller and smaller with every passing instant. In a few seconds the sight of them had faded from view and the sounds of them from earshot.
Turning, he looked back at Fluff as Moam and Bluebright crawled out of the vertical disc into which they had jumped. “How long will they fall?”
“Awhile,” the easygoing Ulru-Ujurrian assured him.
“Forever?” Flinx asked uncertainly.
“Oh no!” Clambering back out onto the surface of Visaria, Moam laughed both audibly and telepathically. “A tunnel goes from place to place. Forever is not a place.”
“Tunnel starts on Ulru-Ujurr,” Bluebright elaborated, “so bad people come out at end of tunnel there.” Sharp white teeth showed in powerful jaws. “Maybe Maybeso will be waiting for them.”
That, Flinx reflected, remembering what was essentially a wild and undeveloped world lying under strict Commonwealth edict, should give Piegal Shaeb and his cronies something to think about. Especially if the nebulous and unfathomable Maybeso was waiting to greet them at the other end of their terrifying plunge. He walked over to one figure, now sitting up, that had not been caught within the consuming circumference of the second disc.
“Subar, are you all right?” Reaching down, he gave the younger man a hand up.
“My body feels like I’ve ingested three weeks’ worth of customi depressants in one sitting.” He nodded in the direction of the three ursinoids. “The fact that those things are still here doesn’t help.”
Smiling, Flinx turned to join him in facing the Ulru-Ujurrians. All three of them had fallen to loud arguing. Being the only known true telepaths, they did not have to vocalize their wrangling. But they liked the noises that came out of their mouths.
“They’re friends of mine,” Flinx explained. “Old friends. Good friends.”
“Really weird friends.” Subar eyed the two black discs, one hovering perpendicular to the ground as if it had been pinned to the air, the other lying flat and unfathomable upon it. “I like their timing, though.”
Flinx nodded. “We have between us—a kind of connection, I guess you’d say. That, and some history.” He considered the quarreling Ulru-Ujurrians fondly. “I guess, when they’re not ‘digging,’ they occasionally keep an eye on me. Ursinoidus ex machina.”
“Keep an eye on you?” Still dazed, Subar could only shake his head in disbelief. “Keep an eye on you how?”
Flinx’s tone was somber. “If I knew that, I think I’d have the answer to one or two questions that would keep Commonwealth physicists busy for a hundred years or so.”
Careful to keep his distance from the edge, the younger man indicated the inscrutable black disc lying at their feet. “And this is?”
His tall friend made a face. “Children like to play with toys. You and your friends like to play with more grown-up things, like guns and thievery.” He indicated the chattering ursinoids. “The Ulru-Ujurrians are kind of like children, except they like to play games with the fabric of space–time. Think of it as crocheting with superstrings.”
“I’d rather not think of it at all.” Looking past the inscrutable offworlder, past the pushing, shoving, big-eyed aliens, Subar gazed longingly in the direction of the residential complex. He was remembering something, or rather someone, more important.
“Ashile?”
Flinx allowed himself the first unadulterated smile of the night. “She’s fine. They’re all fine. Why don’t you go and reassure them as to the future of their respective fineness?”
Nodding briskly, the younger man started toward the building. After a few steps, he broke into a run. Flinx could sense his elation.
Belatedly, his Talent had returned.
Nor were he and Subar the only ones to recover from the shock they had absorbed from the neuronic weapons. Landing on his shoulder, a still woozy Pip slithered forward and nearly slid off before catching her tail around the back of his neck. One pink-and-blue wing kept hitting him in the face. Reaching up, he steadied her and was preparing to rejoin the three Ulru-Ujurrians when a voice made him look back. The words were barely audible. Peering into the darkness, which would soon give way to the blurry Visarian dawn, he saw that one other figure had escaped plummeting into the gaping mouth of the Ujurrian tunnel.
Though he was physically fading fast, the man’s emotions were still strong and focused. Focused on him, the approaching Flinx noted. Kneeling beside the prone figure that had rolled over onto its back, Flinx took careful note of the hole in the chest, the faltering respiration, the glaze that was spreading like milk over the wide-open eyes.
“I can’t help you,” he murmured. “You need full healing. I have that capability on my ship, but not with me.” He looked around. “Tracken has a haulage skimmer. We can try getting you to a facility in Malandere, but I don’t think there’s time.” He added, almost as an afterthought. “I know a fatal wound when I see one.”
Theodakris’s lips fluttered. “Philip Lynx.” Reaching up, a trembling hand touched the younger man’s chest. The fingers traveled sideways and downward, stroking Flinx’s arm, his wrist, the back of his right hand. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Flinx did not know how to respond. “Where should I be?”
The barest suggestion of a smile creased the dying senior analyst’s lips. “You’re an Adept. You shouldn’t be anywhere. You shouldn’t—be.”
Suddenly Flinx found himself leaning closer. “What are you babbling about? Who are you, that you know my name?” A sudden thought, too terrifying to contemplate, nearly overcame him. “You’re not—are you my father?” While it was not the response Flinx feared, the man’s reaction was also completely unexpected.
He laughed.
It wasn’t much of a laugh. More of a choking cough. The senior analyst did not have much strength left in him. But a laugh it was. Thoughts flying from every mental direction, Flinx wanted to lift the man up by his shirtfront and shake him.
“What’s going on here? Who are you? Why are you laughing?”
“I am—not your father, no, Philip Lynx. Philip Lynx—Number Twelve-A. But I know who your father is.”
Fighting to restrain himself, starting to shiver, Flinx put his face as close to that of the dying man as he could. “You know my father? How—how do I know you’re not lying?”
Eyes from which the life force was fast fading met his own. There was in them a wonderment and desperation—and also, oddly, a contrary kind of contentment.
“You are not the product of a natural union. Your birth mother was a woman named Ruud Anasage. Your place of birth is listed as Sarnath, on Terra. You had one full and one half sister, both of whom are presumed dead.”
“Not so,” Flinx told him, remembering the one of the two who was, in all probability, still alive.
A surge of interest momentarily rejuvenated the rapidly weakening senior analyst. “Is that so? Fascinating! It only further confirms the potential of the twelve line.” He began to choke on his own blood.
No longer able to help himself, Flinx clutched at the front of the man’s bloody shirt with both hands. Alarmed by the strength of the emotions she felt surging uncontrollably through her master, a frightened Pip took to the air, searching for a threat that did not exist. In the distance, the sky was beginning to lighten. “My father,” he husked. “The male donor responsible for the genes that Ruud Anasage carried to term. Who are you?”
“My name—my name is Shvyil Theodakris. Né Theon al-bar Cocarol. I am a proud member of the Meliorare Society. The last member of the Meliorare Society.” He choked again, blood trickling from a corner of his mouth. “The last un-mindwiped member, anyway. The experiments—experiments are not supposed to have knowledge of their biological progenitors.” Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, in one of those astonishing and unpredictable but not unprecedented occurrences that immediately precede death, Theodakris–al-bar Cocarol reached up, grabbed Flinx’s shirt, and pulled himself into a half-sitting position.
“Gestalt,” he rasped, wide-eyed—and died.
Prying loose the dead man’s clutching fingers, Flinx let Shyvil Theodakris–Theon al-bar Cocarol, senior situations analyst for the city of Malandere and last surviving sensate member of the outlawed Meliorare Society, fall gently back to the ground. Rising, he beckoned Pip back to his shoulder. Doing so meant looking upward, and looking upward meant involuntarily contemplating the stars whose brightness was being slowly overcome by the approaching dawn.
Gestalt, the old man had gasped. Searching his excellent memory, Flinx found the definition quickly enough. “A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.” Searching elsewhere, he recalled something of even more significance. Gestalt was also an H Class VIII colony world with a single moon. Located on the other side of the Commonwealth, it was about the same relative distance from Earth as the important thranx system of Amropolous.
The inescapable inference of Theodakris–al-bar Cocarol’s last word was that he should look for his father on Gestalt. How appropriate.
A world was bigger than a book, or a sybfile. But Gestalt was not Terra, or New Riviera, or the Centaurus system. He would be searching among millions, not billions. A hand came down on the shoulder not occupied by Pip. No, not a hand. A paw. Dexterous beyond imagining, but a paw nonetheless. Turning, he found himself gazing up into the wide, flat face of Fluff.
“Great game goes on, Flinx. We keep playing our side, you keep playing yours. Always new elements are being introduced.” Teeth flashed in an enormous—and to anyone else intimidating—smile. “Keeps the game interesting.”
Moam and Bluebright joined him, surrounding Flinx. “Changes brewing and bubbling and festering, Flinx teacher. Big changes. Sinister changes. Time is tick-tick-ticking away. Like the clocks you described to us, the universe is winding down.”
“Don’t want it to stop too soon,” Bluebright added somberly.
“At least, not until the game is finished,” Moam added encouragingly.
Falling once more to arguing between themselves, the two of them turned and, without hesitation, hopped into the ominous black disc that was lying flat and round upon the ground. As soon as the last suggestion of brown fur had vanished within, so did the mouth of a kind of tunnel the most advanced contemporary physics did not possess a mathematical means of accurately describing.
Retreating to the hovering, vertical disc, Fluff stuck one foot in. As it disappeared, the massive Ulru-Ujurrian hesitated.
“Make sure you make the right moves, Flinx teacher. We can move our world, but we can’t move you. Only you can move you and—maybe other things.”
The significance of the advice was not lost on Flinx.
Fluff stepped the rest of the way into the tunnel. In his wake it proceeded to poof out of existence. Walking over to where it had hovered suspended in space, time, and who knew what other dimensions, Flinx passed his hands through empty air where a moment earlier there had hung a scandalous distortion of reality. A faint and rapidly fading warmth was the only indication that this corner of existence had just been occupied by something immeasurable and inexplicable.
A voice called out to him. Several voices. In the strengthening light of morning he could see several figures making their way toward him. Their faces, and their emotions, were full of jubilation. His rifle now hanging at his side, the affable agrigeneer Tracken Behdulvlad brought up the rear. Walking in front of him were Missi, Zezula, and Sallow Behdul. To Flinx’s satisfaction, and not a little to his surprise, the soft-spoken Sallow Behdul had his arm around Zezula’s faultless shoulders. She was not shaking him off.
Ahead of them, Subar and Ashile walked hand in hand. They were all of them exhausted both physically and emotionally, worn and battered but alive. Unless the Underhouse master Piegal Shaeb was far more adept at a certain remarkable kind of tunnel-digging than Flinx suspected, none of them had anything further to fear from either him or his murderous minions.
As for himself and Pip, the dubious search for a wandering planet-sized weapons platform of the long extinct Tar-Aiym would have to wait just a bit longer. After more than a decade of intensive searching for the merest clue to his father’s identity, he had unexpectedly been given a specific locality to search. Irrespective of anyone else’s priorities, be they ex-stingship pilot, Eint, Counselor of the United Church, or Commonwealth representative, he had no intention of neglecting that suggestion. The Commonwealth, the cosmos itself, would have to wait on him awhile longer.
Setting that momentous decision aside for the moment, he let himself reach out to the primarily youthful oncoming group, let their feelings of joy and relief wash over him. Those of Subar and Ashile were especially cleansing and refreshing. He luxuriated in them because he had experienced them so fully himself, in the company of a woman named Clarity.
Clarity. She would wait awhile longer, too, he knew. He wondered what wonders Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex were showing her even as he stood lost in thought.
Then his new Malanderean friends were clustering around him, the men clapping him on the back—careful to avoid contact with the minidrag dozing lightly there—and congratulating him, while the young women praised him with thankful smiles and the occasional virtuous kiss. In response, he smiled and laughed and joked back with them as together they started toward the residential complex. Safe now and for at least the foreseeable future, every one of them including Flinx discovered that they were absolutely starving.
The galaxy might be in imminent danger, he knew, and its future survival might rest ultimately on his shoulders, but at least these kids who reminded him so much and not always flatteringly of his younger self—these kids who were among the current representatives of his often objectionable species—they were all right.
And maybe, just maybe, worth saving.